Choosing your Courses
Body
Course enrolment will open on Friday 26th April 2024.
This page will be updated soon.
As part of your degree at Edinburgh, you have the opportunity to select optional courses to take alongside those that are compulsory for your degree programme.
Depending on your area of study, there is a large range of different courses from all over the University available to choose from.
The process of choosing your optional courses and having them added to your student record is known as pre-selection.
The process of collecting course choices from students differs from school to school across the University of Edinburgh.
Before you submit your course choices, please take some time to watch our video as well as read the guidance below.
A guide to choosing your course options
- How to choose your courses (including DRPS guidance)
A normal year load is 120 credits (most commonly six 20 credit courses). For most degrees, your courses should be distributed evenly between Semester 1 and Semester 2.
Once you establish what your compulsory core courses are, you will be able to make your optional course selections.
When selecting your courses, always check the following:
- you meet all prerequisites of the course
- the year and level of the course are appropriate
Which compulsory and optional courses are open to you is dependent on your degree programme and your year of study.
You can view this information using the University’s Degree Regulations and Programmes of Study (DRPS) pages.
This is the method recommended by the school.- School of Social and Political Science (SPS) course listings
In SPS teaching activities will be campus based and in-person. Any exceptions to this will be detailed on the course listings page.
These course listings will show you the draft timetabling details for courses within SPS.
These documents will not show the full details of all the courses available to you, so please ensure you review DRPS to see all of your options.
Submit your course choices
Students on programmes run by the School of Social and Political Sciences (SPS) should submit their choices via the forms below.
Students on programmes run by other schools: please follow the instructions provided by your own school for pre-selection. SPS does not need to pre-approve your courses.
- Guidance on completing the course choice form
We strongly recommend completing your form via a desktop browser (Google Chrome works best), instead of a mobile device. If you have any technical difficulties, please clear your browsing history and cache first.
When completing the online pre-selection form, you will need to list ALL your compulsory and optional courses for each semester, including those from other schools.
Please indicate your options in order of preference, and list more than the required 120 credits, in case your first choices for optional courses are over-subscribed.
Due to the volume of forms being processed by the Undergraduate Teaching Office (UTO), no confirmation emails are issued when you have been signed up for your selected courses.
If there are problems with your selections, we will contact you via your student email address.
Please regularly check your University email account. Please also check your junk and clutter folders in case any of our communications end up there.
Priority will be given to those who submit by the deadlines
You should make every effort to complete these course choice forms by the deadlines below to avoid disappointment.
Forms will remain open after these deadlines have passed, up until the 5th of September.
These submissions will be actioned after the on-time submissions.
Year 1 Students starting September 2023
- Guidance for Students entering Year 1 in September 2023
To view details of courses open to year 1 students in SPS, please visit Schedule J on DRPS.
Not all the courses available to you will be shown, only those in SPS, so please ensure you review the Degree Regulations and Programmes of Study (DRPS) to see your full options.
Guide on how to use DRPS to view your course choicesPDF format: Guide on how to use DRPS to view your course choices
Guidance notes and Frequently Asked QuestionsWord format: Guidance notes & FAQs
Year 2 Students starting September 2023
Years 3 and 4 Students starting September 2023
- Students on Politics or International Relations joint degrees (e.g History and Politics, Law and International Relations) please use this form as well as following the process of your home school.
- Honours Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) Students must submit multiple forms, please find details below:
- Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) Students - further submission guidance
All honours PPE students are required to submit their Politics and Economics course choices via Form B and submit a separate form to the Schools of PPLS with their Philosophy course choices. The School of Economics is not responsible for signing you up for your Economics courses.
If you are unsure of how to list your choices in Form B, please email us at sps.pre-selection@ed.ac.uk.
Course change options
Students can request a change to their optional courses up until the end of Week 2 of each semester by completing an online form. Students may be placed on a waiting list for courses that are full.
The information on this page is not applicable to 2024-25 enrolments and will be updated in due course.
Frequently asked questions - FAQ document
Please note this document is subject to change.